State-civil society relations in Gramsci, Poulantzas and Bourdieu: Strategic implications for the degrowth movement

Degrowth: a path to transformative solutions for socio-ecological sustainability

“…The degrowth literature has begun to address horizontal and vertical governance issues and specifically the role of the state (D'Alisa & Kallis, 2020; Koch 2020, 2022b). Although the modern state, including the welfare state, has co-evolved with the provision of economic growth, the emerging consensus is that it can nevertheless play an important role within degrowth transformations.…”

“…For instance, the terms 'degrowth' and 'post-growth' are mentioned several times in the AR6 IPCC report. In the adaptation report, it is described as 'a solution for achieving environmental sustainability and socio-economic progress' and as a 'deliberate response to concerns about ecological limits to growth and the compatibility between growth-oriented development and sustainability' (IPCC, 2022a, 2022b. The mitigation report mentions 'GDP non-growth/degrowth or post-growth' as approaches allowing climate stabilization below 2°C (IPCC, 2022a, chapter III, p. 86).…”

Deliberating a Sustainable Welfare–Work Nexus

“…Corresponding policy suggestions have been tabled in various areas, ranging from macroeconomic steering, inequality/redistribution via carbon rationing, and consumption to work-time regulation. There is agreement, especially among sustainable welfare scholars, that turning these policy suggestions into reality would require, on top of “bottom-up” civil society engagement (Buch-Hansen 2018 ; Koch 2022 b), an actively intervening state (Koch 2020 ). Concerning the “floors” or the sufficiency level of needs satisfaction, proponents have, for example, suggested the introduction of a universal and unconditional basic income (UBI; e.g., Van Parijs and Vanderborght 2017 ), the expansion or introduction of universal basic services (UBS; e.g., Coote and Percy 2020 ), a voucher system (Bohnenberger 2020 ), or a combination of the three (Büchs 2021 ).…”

Degrowth Perspective for Sustainability in Built Environments

“…While influential scientists within this paradigm can be identified [1], including perhaps most notably Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen [8,9] and Serge Latouche [10], currently, multiple scholars from a wide variety of disciplines are working with the concept of degrowth which contributes to the diversity within this academic paradigm. They include sociologists (see, e.g., [11]), political economists (see, e.g., [12]), and geographers (see, e.g., [13]). In recent years, adventurous inter-disciplinarity has become even more evident in the broad and growing field of degrowth.…”